When society lost the communality of a society based on myth, it necessarily also lost all the referents – both spoken of and written of – of a language that is truly shared and held in common. And it will be this way until the moment when the broken-ness and fragmented-ness that happens when there is no active sense of community, is healed and transcended by the opening of society to its own history, and its own awareness of the ongoing possibilities of history, and all the sense of community that comes with that. Art – which has been the lingua franca of a society with no active sense of community – as soon as it emerged from its sacred origins in a religious world, and became a matter of creative individuals producing distinct and separate “works of art”, it became a special case: a way of thinking and creating that is in touch with the contradictions and movements that are in the foreground or the development – and ongoing history – of our fragmented culture. And so, the affirmation of its independent status – as autonomous “art” – was also automatically the beginning of the long, slow process of its abolition.

* – * – *

So know your history – and the history of those around you – make art together, be active, and dance!!!

“a well bored into water-bearing strata lying at an angle, so that natural pressure produces a constant supply of water with little or no pumping: the water from artesian wells makes agriculture possible.”

Lynn-san’s thinking is that those lovely steppe breeds are an ancient font, a source well, for many families of performance horses and of course for elegant, powerful movement:

AND COMING UP: LYNN-SAN is teaching a workshop:

March 16 thru 18, 2018 (with Open Studio on March 19) Boise, Idaho.
held in Lynn-san’s studio, Boise, Idaho

In this three-day workshop students will learn the basics of equine anatomy, how to best utilize references, form an armature, and then apply clay to create a sculpture. The workshop is as much about sharing ideas, learning to analyze various references and how to then translate that information into three dimensions as it is about creating an object. These techniques can be used in creating a sculpture of any animal…

Aikido is a gem of many facets – sometimes it seems that every one of O’Sensei’s students remembered a different teacher, and of course, many, many different styles have been preserved and developed – but here is one facet that clicked into focus for me recently:

what if O’Sensei spent his time away from Iwama and Tokyo coherently pursuing what he felt to be his “mission in life”?…

what if he spent his time away from Iwama and Tokyo creating and nurturing a network of dojos run by Omoto-Kyo, ex-Omoto-Kyo and Ko-Shinto believers ( hand-picked deshi, some of them raised, almost, as members of his family) – – – and ex-Kamikaze pilots, too (!) – often with his own name on the sign – in places – and close to shrines…